We need to match the characteristics of the router to its purpose. Similar to the switch, cost and interface types and speeds must be considered as well. Additional factors for choosing a router include:

For the selection of devices, the budget is an important consideration. Routers can be expensive based on interfaces and features needed. Additional modules, such as fiber-optics, can increase the costs. The media used to connect to the router should be supported without needing to purchase additional modules

LAN Cabling

When planning the installation of LAN cabling, there are four physical areas to consider:

The following terms describe the types of devices that maintain the link between a sending and a receiving device:

Data Communications Equipment (DCE) – A device that supplies the clocking services to another device. Typically, this device is at the WAN access provider end of the link.

Data Terminal Equipment (DTE) – A device that receives clocking services from another device and adjusts accordingly. Typically, this device is at the WAN customer or user end of the link.

If a serial connection is made directly to a service provider or to a device that provides signal clocking such as a channel service unit/data service unit (CSU/DSU), the router is considered to be data terminal equipment (DTE) and will use a DTE serial cable. (pokoknya yang buat clock rate adalah DCE)

DCEs and DTEs are used in WAN connections. The communication via a WAN connection is maintained by providing a clock rate that is acceptable to both the sending and the receiving device. In most cases, the telco or ISP provides the clocking service that synchronizes the transmitted signal.

For example, if a device connected via a WAN link is sending its signal at 1.544 Mbps, each receiving device must use a clock, sending out a sample signal every 1/1,544,000th of a second. The timing in this case is extremely short. The devices must be able to synchronize to the signal that is sent and received very quickly.

By assigning a clock rate to the router, the timing is set. This allows a router to adjust the speed of its communication operations, thereby synchronizing with the devices connected to it.

Manage Broadcast Traffic – Broadcasts can be controlled because one large broadcast domain is divided into a number of smaller domains. Not every host in the system receives every broadcast.

Different Network Requirements – If different groups of users require specific network or computing facilities, it is easier to manage these requirements if those users who share requirements are all together on one subnet.

Security – Different levels of network security can be implemented based on network addresses. This enables the management of access to different network and data services.

The Destination MAC Address field (6 bytes) is the identifier for the intended recipient. Seperti yang kita tahu bahwa alamat ini digunakan layer 2 (data link) untuk membantu devices menentukan apakah sebuah frame yang ditujukan kepada mereka. The address in the frame is compared to the MAC address in the device. If there is a match, the device accepts the frame.

Length field (or Type Field) defines the exact length of the frame’s data field. This is used later as part of the FCS to ensure that the message was received properly. If the purpose of the field is to designate a type as in Ethernet II, the Type field describes which protocol is implemented. (apakah Ethernet II ini lebih baik daripada Ethernet biasa ataukah Ethernet II ini maksudnya adalah FastEthernet yang digunakan sekarang ini, gw kurang tau…feel free to provide me with the Information)

The Data and Pad field (46 – 1500 bytes) contains the encapsulated data from a higher layer, which is a generic Layer 3 PDU, or more commonly, an IPv4 packet. All frames must be at least 64 bytes long. If a small packet is encapsulated, the Pad is used to increase the size of the frame to this minimum size.

The Frame Check Sequence (FCS) field (4 bytes) is used to detect errors in a frame. It uses a cyclic redundancy check (CRC). The sending device includes the results of a CRC in the FCS field of the frame.

*gw ga ajarin CRC, out of field gw…liat aja di Wikipedia

Initially, Ethernet was implemented as part of a bus topology. Every network device was connected to the same, shared media. In low traffic or small networks, this was an acceptable deployment. The main problem to solve was how to identify each device. The signal could be sent to every device, but how would each device identify if it were the intended receiver of the message?

using MAC Address Structure

MAC Address = 48 bit size

The MAC address value is a direct result of IEEE-enforced rules for vendors to ensure globally unique addresses for each Ethernet device (kita bisa bilang…ini nomor/alamat Mesin). The rules established by IEEE require any vendor that sells Ethernet devices to register with IEEE. The IEEE assigns the vendor a 3-byte code, called the Organizationally Unique Identifier (OUI) (ada 1 pertanyaan CCNA Exam tentang ginian loh…wkwkw kampret kan..ginian jg ditanyain).

IEEE requires a vendor to follow two simple rules:

All MAC addresses assigned to a NIC or other Ethernet device must use that vendor’s assigned OUI as the first 3 bytes.

All MAC addresses with the same OUI must be assigned a unique value (vendor code or serial number) in the last 3 bytes.

The MAC address is often referred to as a burned-in address (BIA) because it is burned into ROM (Read-Only Memory) on the NIC. This means that the address is encoded into the ROM chip permanently – it cannot be changed by software. (makanya kadang disebut Physical Address)

However, when the computer starts up, the NIC copies the address into RAM. When examining frames, it is the address in RAM that is used as the source address to compare with the destination address. The MAC address is used by the NIC to determine if a message should be passed to the upper layers for processing. (makanya ada software2/hardware2 buat duplikat MAC address…contohnya aja TP-LINK…ada tuh buat duplicate mac address…biasanya buat Internetan pake Cable modem kek FastNet)

Figure 1 Taken from Wikipedia.org

The source device sends the data through the network. Each NIC in the network views the information to see if the MAC address matches its physical address. If there is no match, the device discards the frame. When the frame reaches the destination where the MAC of the NIC matches the destination MAC of the frame, the NIC passes the frame up the OSI layers, where the decapsulation process take place.

All devices connected to an Ethernet LAN have MAC-addressed interfaces. Different hardware and software manufacturers might represent the MAC address in different hexadecimal formats. The address formats might be similar to 00-05-9A-3C-78-00, 00:05:9A:3C:78:00, or 0005.9A3C.7800 (klo lo liat2 sama…Cuma beda penempatan titk, dash, sama titik dua aja). MAC addresses are assigned to workstations, servers, printers, switches, and routers – any device that must originate and/or receive data on the network.

The electrical signal that is transmitted takes a certain amount of time (latency) to propagate (travel) down the cable

Ethernet with throughput speeds of 10 Mbps and slower are asynchronous. An asynchronous communication in this context means that each receiving device will use the 8 bytes of timing information to synchronize the receive circuit to the incoming data and then discard the 8 bytes.

Ethernet implementations with throughput of 100 Mbps and higher are synchronous. Synchronous communication in this context means that the timing information is not required. However, for compatibility reasons, the Preamble and Start Frame Delimiter (SFD) fields are still present.

As a broadcast frame, an ARP request is received and processed by every device on the local network. On a typical business network, these broadcasts would probably have minimal impact on network performance. However, if a large number of devices were to be powered up and all start accessing network services at the same time, there could be some reduction in performance for a short period of time. For example, if all students in a lab logged into classroom computers and attempted to access the Internet at the same time, there could be delays. (Overhead on the Media)

In some cases, the use of ARP can lead to a potential security risk. ARP spoofing, or ARP poisoning, is a technique used by an attacker to inject the wrong MAC address association into a network by issuing fake ARP requests. An attacker forges the MAC address of a device and then frames can be sent to the wrong destination. (Security)

Manually configuring static ARP associations is one way to prevent ARP spoofing. Authorized MAC addresses can be configured on some network devices to restrict network access to only those devices listed.